helenas

Maybe somebody remembers, what book mentions using "peach kernels" as a secret ingredient in, i think, amaretto cookies, or maybe it was in something else. Browsing through my cookbooks, as well as googling, didn't help. Thank you, Helena

Here is a review for Happy City. Sounds like a place to try.

And then for all of us who crave armenian food once in a while, there is a new book The Armenian Table, published recently. I have the book, so far had no chance to cook from it, but in the very least, it makes for a good read.

Salmon with arabic spices: a recipe coming from my favorite Greg Malouf - lebanese born australian chef - a brilliant way to spice up that boring farmed salmon: fish medallions (i cut and skinned them from the tail part i got in chinese grocery), covered with fresh tyme, zaatar and sumac and very slowly (it took me about 40 minutes) baked on the lowest setting of the oven. Mine is 250F, so i kept the door ajar through the whole cooking (gave me about 200f). The result was a fish of great taste and incomparable texture, almost gelatinous... The choice of sides was sort of tricky but i ended up making some hummus, served with harissa and romaine instead of pitas. Cut up radishes and tomatoes.

Yesterday night i had roasted apricots cravings so made this apricot pizza of unleavened dough with excellent Valpolicella olive oil.

Ellen, thanks for asking, and i'm almost embarassed to answer as i don't know much about photography: i make pictures of food to show off on Dinner thread and of my three pets, because they're unbearably cute and goofy. The main rule i follow i learned actually from you: make as many shots as possible. Usually after making around 20 shots i have one more or less decent i use Canon PowerShot S230. Always use tripod while making pictures of food. Microsoft Photo Editor mostly employing two options: Image Crop and Image Balance.

Not that it matters in the context of the thread, but Nelli is he

Also i invite all of us to look at the following food photography masters and learn from them: Isabelle Rozenbaum; Nelli Sheffer; Please, add to the list.

While wandering through Wegmans deciding on what to cook for dinner, stumbled on some new german-style breads, one of them being a real rye, in fact looking almost like a real russian bread... As a result the dinner was inspired by this bread discovery and the cover recipe of the recent "Cuisine et Vins de France" issue - Tomates Farcies Au Pain. Pain de campagne, crsiply browned and rubbed with some cut up garlic, torn to small pieces added to tomato pulp to absorb it, thinly sliced chorizo (Palacios of course) added and the thing stuffed into tomato shells. Although published in french magazine and called for some european ingreadiens (chorizo and parmeggiano (that i skipped adding some grainy dijon instead)), it was still a quintessential russian food.

It sure does not: since Toliver mistook those eggplants for mushrooms Once again, agree: that's why on many occasions i felt like taking a picture just before some dish would go to the oven - way bettter looking than when it would come out ... but pondering at so many pictures in cookbooks i have a suspicion that there are many trucs that we, amateurs don't employ not only because we're not aware of them but also because our ultimate concern is to make a dinner: the picture is just a nice souvenir

Very educational thread. Please critique:

In US, they're available raw by mail order; check the froogle by tying raw marcona almonds

Sheep milk ricotta gnocchi, the original recipe came from the last F&W, and sounded very tempting to try. God bless one of my local stores, so getting the necessary ricotta was not a problem. I changed the mushroom ragu though: used flower and oyster mushrooms with chinese flowring chives and blue shrimp. Served with watercress, abd couple on nice beers: beligian golden style from some microbrewery and inevitable Sam Smith.

Sure, although to be presize, Paula actually wrote one book on Morrocan cuisine per se: incidentally this was the book that i got just yesterday to complete my set of her books. And there right in the introduction by Gael Green was a prelude to the things to come: "The book vibrates with that same delicious loving madness"... How many other books one could add to the same category?.. Edited to fix the quote...

I'm hooked on all things Unusual - the book goes straight to my wishlist, thank you! Speaking of Morocco, how about the titles dedicated to particular country cuisine: Morocco, Lebanon, Tunisia... Here are some titles on my worldwide amazon wishlist: from UK: Simple Lebanese by Ina'am Atalla; from France: Deux cents recettes de cuisine tunisienne by Edmond Zeitoun (recommended by C.Wright); Le Mezzé libanais ; Tunisie : La Cuisine de ma mère by Odette Touitou and Isabelle Rozenbaum; On a tangent: Isabelle Rozenbaum contributed breathtaking photography for numerous french titles: her site can be found here: Isabelle Rozenbaum : Photographe culinaire

I'm interested to know what titles are in the libraries of those who are crazy about the middle eastren cuisine. Here are my favorites, beyond the full set of Paula Wolfert's titles: Greg Malouf, Arabesque and Moorish; Chillie Basan, Modern Moroccan and The Middle Eastern Kitchen; borderline, but i refer to these books a lot - The Mediterranean Kitchen by Joyce Goldstein; Moro; Clifford Wright's mediterranean whatever; i'd like to appreciate the following titles: Cooking at the Kasbah; Momo; but it hasn't happen yet...

so shoot me but i couldn't wait until tomorrow: the intoxicating aroma enticed me into having a bite, and then it was just impossible to stop It was so good that i can't imagine further improvement in flavor!

Paula, what a miracle: i left right after you posted the first time to shop for your lentil/eggplant stew and came back just in time for the fig cheese Back to the store to get some milk and will report tonight on the results: have some very nice greek Kalamata dired figs.

Great article - thanks for pointing to it; now i'm completely obsessed with this cheese made with fresh figs - i'm pulling out all my cookbooks, there should be some leads on how to try making it at home

Thanks for responding: since it seems we have a similar likes in cookbooks, i'll skip on Blue Ginger. How about Sri Lankan Flavours? It's another one on my wishlist of australian titles. In the meantime, i got The Lebanese Kitchen by Abla Amad, a friend of Greg Malouf's.

Thanks for being so inspiring and for all the suggestions, please keep them coming! in the meantime, i checked several online dictionaries: the following one seems to offer quite an impressive number of entries: From Language to Language

Chicken/chickpea tagine in rich sweet tomato sauce with a bite of young ginger and aleppo pepper:

don't know what happened as i got some stupid lycos search page after the posting

I'm also curious about what do you think about Les Huynh's Blue Ginger cookbook? Sounds similar to Manfield's in spirit.

i would definitely prefer to read the background information, sure! Is Turkish close to any other language? I know Russian, French and Hebrew, does it help? Did you take a course with a teacher, and it was a self-study? Any online dictionary you'd recommend? Thanks much.